


Ticktock Man

by ninemoons42



Category: Inception
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Families of Choice, Family, Flashback, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-14
Updated: 2011-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Ticktock Man

  
title: Ticktock Man  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: 928  
fandom: Inception  
characters: Eames, Ariadne, Arthur, OCs  
rating: G  
notes: Some backstory and exploration of Eames's military past, with mentions of a medal. BAMFery. And have I mentioned watch geekery? I am a big fan of pocket watches.  
Written for [](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**kink_bingo**](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/). Kink: mechanical/technological. My card is [here](http://ilovetakahana.livejournal.com/111469.html).

  
Eames opens his eyes.

Soft sputter of gas outside the window. Heavy brocaded curtains in green trimmed with white. London shrouded in fog, streetwalkers calling for their marks in the night. Clatter of hooves on cobblestoned street.

Victoriana always reminds him of his home: lace and mauve cushions in his mother's rooms, the deep burgundy pinstripes on his father's favorite suit jacket, the bell pulls in the corners of the rooms. A handful of servants manning the kitchen and the dining room; the grandfather clock ticking the seconds away. Westminster chimes striking the quarter hour. His sister stirring too many sugar cubes into her tea; his grandfather slipping him an extra iced biscuit from the table with a conspiratorial wink.

This is Eames's safe place. This is what he dreams of, when he's dreaming because he wants to sleep, when he's dreaming because he's had a hell of a day.

Topside, his left arm is wrapped elbow to wrist in bandages. Six new stitches. Ariadne is a hell of a battlefield surgeon, her hands rocksteady as she put him back together. That she can neutralize an attacker as well as heal an injury is also glaringly obvious. He can still vividly remember her contribution to the shootout: the movement as she bound off the final stitch, then yanked his SIG Sauer P226 out of its holster, spun around and got to her feet in the same fluid motion, shot the thugs off Arthur's back.

Arthur himself, defending them, flick knives in his black-gloved hands. Dancing among the bad guys, his eyebrows pulled together in a straight line, his mouth in a grimace that was also half a grin. Flash of the blades as he worked them, in and out and a stroke to the side to keep the works from gumming up with blood.

There's never anything good about a job that goes pear-shaped, although he counts it as a minor victory that he's got what they came for. It's just that they didn't exactly walk away from this one. More like limped away – at least, he did, with Ariadne and Arthur as his rather lopsided crutches.

He closes the curtains with a grin. Here, he can forget about the pain, about his stitches, about the job and all of its imperfections. Besides, he's fairly certain his projections of the two have just run past on the sidewalk, Ariadne in a gorgeous dress and Arthur in a top hat. He doesn't know if they're working together or if they're opposing each other. There will be time enough to explore the idea in other dreams.

For now, he turns back to his small study. A bright lantern on the table, gleam of light off the black felt spread over the short end. Eames doffs his hat and hangs it up, and he hooks a sturdy seat with his ankle, sits down next to the black felt, facing the wooden case and the leather bag.

In the waking world, the chain snaking out of his pocket leads to a battered pocket watch of unknown provenance. The first thing he'd ever pickpocketed successfully. It's long since stopped, of course, the hands forever reading a quarter past nine. It's half a totem; he can change it, at will, in the dreams – or he can simply allow it to run, as it does now, when he pulls it out of his pocket and there's a tiny tick-ticking heartbeat in his fingers.

Eames smiles. Gone is the actual scratched case. This watch sports a golden case and a beautiful diagram of an armillary sphere on the back. Blue jewels at the quarters, and a crescent at the ends of the hour and minute hands. It is a near-exact copy of his grandfather's pocket watch. He's spent years dreaming of the watch, trying to find it in the real world.

It had been stolen from his grandfather on his deathbed – and Eames had not been there because he had been laid up with a shattered leg in Iraq. A day of good news and bad: a Military Cross for saving three comrades from a tank that had been blown up by a landmine, and his grandfather's death from cancer.

Eames knows exactly where the cross is now, or at least he hopes it's still there – in his grandfather's coffin. A poor replacement for the missing watch, as is this copy sitting in his hand.

He puts the pocket watch away and opens the wooden box, draws out a soft leather pouch, upends it over the black felt. Silver and steel, the makings of a lever escapement, half a handful of watch jewels, a black-enameled set of watch hands. From another compartment of the box he pulls a delicate set of tools and a loupe.

He's been practicing for a long time, but it's still close work, so he moves as carefully as he can: the gears locking together smoothly, the tiny jewels to help smooth the movement, the hands set in the plain background with its Roman numerals, one to twelve. Pliers for the links of the chain.

Eames squints and moves the lamp around. The watch comes together under his hands: silver case, white background, black numerals, black hands. Tick, tick, tick. A purple rose on the back, and his true initials.

It's good enough a design to go on, and he thinks he'll commission two of them, for Arthur and for Ariadne both. A gift, a thank you, for saving his life. Their own private award for conspicuous gallantry.  



End file.
